It’s been a little over two weeks since my second novel Neuen was released into the world, which means I’m overdue for highlighting some of my inspirations for the story.
Seed
Every story starts with a small initial idea. For some authors, a setting is key. For others, a character might be the spark they need. For me, the seed of my fiction ideas typically come from some scientific concept. Go figure seeing how I write science fiction. However, Neuen is a bit unique in how the novel came about. There’s a bit of a history behind it that spans roughly eighteen years (oof!).
I won’t go into gory detail, but if you’d like a little more context, I discuss my writing history in this post here. Essentially, Neuen was born from an earlier novel that underwent pretty extreme changes. In fact, the only parts remaining from the original story are a few character names, the restrictions on the use of technology, and a botanist protagonist.
The current iteration that became Neuen really stemmed from one moment. I was sitting at work, looking out the window while eating my lunch. It was fall, and the leaves were a vivid red on the oak trees outside. I lamented the fact that they would fall off, and we’d be stuck with the dreariness of winter for the next few months. I wished we could somehow move with the seasons to avoid winter altogether. Better yet, what if we could even move the trees with us.
So Neuen was born, a planet with an extremely slow rotation rate that results in hellish days and frigid nights. The only habitable zones are the poles and the day-night interface. Once I had the new setting in mind, the rest of the story fell in place. The environment shaped the society, the characters, and even their motivations.
And what about those characters? How did I settle on my two leads—Levi and Lyn?
Characters
Neuen is dual-POV, and that decision was purposeful. Levi is a botanist who lives in a nomadic tribe that wanders the planet, following its day-night interface. His people, the Reisende, are in exile from genetic tampering that their ancestors performed. The Reisende must live this existence until their genomes are cleansed of the mutations running rampant in them. They do this with controlled reproduction overseen by the high-tech society living in a polar city, the Dipols.
This is where the other narrator, Lyn, hails from. She’s tasked with traveling to every Reisende settlement to monitor the genomes of the newborns. But Lyn isn’t just a foil for Levi. In a lot of ways, she’s a reflection of him. They have much in common. The city she comes from is as much of a blank to her as it is to Levi. She doesn’t remember her life before her tour. She doesn’t even know who she really is.
By using these two narrators, I’m able to tell readers what they need to hear from who they need to hear it. Now, whether they hear the truth is another matter. Have I mentioned before how much I love unreliable narrators?
Every good character needs an arc. They have to have hopes and dreams and, most importantly, wants. Levi has those. Lots of those. He’s a scientist who isn’t allowed to use real technology. His people are nomadic which means they can’t build roots or focus on learning and creating. The Reisende are completely reliant on their jailors (the Dipols) for certain resources (think metals, water, some foods). Levi knows his people deserve more, and he’s certain he can get it for them. He’s too smart for his own good and too ambitious to sit idle. And Lyn? She wants to want, to feel something, anything. She wants what was taken from her—her identity. But it’s not as simple as just finishing her tour and going home to remember who she really is. Something puts a wrench in her plans.
Conflict
Death. A mass of deaths all under mysterious circumstances. This is the inciting incident that sets Levi on his path. A neighboring Reisende tribe misses a trade meet. When the Dipols look from afar, they only find bodies. As the closest member of their ranks, Lyn is sent to investigate, but she’s by no means an expert on the potential causes of the deaths. As such, she brings a few Reisende companions along. Can you guess who one of them would be? Maybe someone with an expertise in plants and the blights that could kill them?
Science
I’ll leave off relaying the plot there to avoid any potential spoilers, but it’s worth discussing the science involved because, unlike the case with my debut, Nytho, Neuen is more of a hard science fiction novel. This comes in two dominate forms—botany and genetic engineering.
Plants play a large role in Neuen (the novel) and on Neuen (the planet). Beyond just providing sustenance, the plants literally let the Reisende breathe courtesy of the luftors. Luftors are Levi’s area of expertise. They’re plants that grow solid oxygen-nitrogen (ONi) crystallites which sublimate on heating. In tents, the ONi are heated in urns to create breathable air. Outside, everyone wears a mask (rebreather) attached to a satchel of ONi. Luftors are the single most important resource to the Reisende.
Genetic engineering is the other main focus of the novel. It’s literally shaped the societies on Neuen. In the past, genetic engineering was allowed so long as the alterations weren’t passed on to offspring, in what’s called germline editing. Germline editing was taboo, but, of course, some people did it anyway. This was the cause of a war that broke out between Levi’s ancestors and Lyn’s and resulted in the exile that the Reisende are stuck in. The genetic engineering lingers like an infestation. It haunts the Reisende, both in their mutations and in the form of genetic chimeras that wander Neuen and attack indiscriminately, remnants of that long-gone war.
Cultural Flavors
The problem with hard science fiction is that it can make a book feel a bit sterile. In my writing, I always put my characters first which alleviates some of these issues, but beyond that, I wanted Neuen to feel real. Lived in. To achieve that, I had to do major world-building. I researched nomadic societies and toyed around with possible cultures to base Neuen off of.
Whichever one I chose had to make sense with the history of the planet. These aren’t just people that have always lived on the planet. They’re humans, from Earth at some distant point in the past. How did they get to Neuen, and why settle on such a hostile world? I won’t dig into that in any detail (read the novel for answers), but I will say that a space colonization company was involved. Undertaking that kind of work jives well with a culture that has a history of solid engineering.
I opted for Germany for a few reasons. One has to do with a minor detail in my first novel (this is also briefly mentioned in Neuen itself). The other has to do with my personal preferences. When I started writing Neuen, I wasn’t living in Germany (although I do now), but I was already learning the language. It was much easier to develop words from a language I had some experience with. Here’s a peppering of German-derived words I use in Neuen: Neuen (new), Reisende (travelers), Stamm (tribe), oberhaupt (leader), luftor (luft = air), jurte (yurt), essen (food), medizin (medicine), willkommen (welcome). The names of some of the characters (Levi, Aarman, Zetmer, Rohn) and the tribes (Vromdorf, Zeindorf) are also influenced by sounds in the German language.
In addition to having this historical influence on the culture, there’s also the planet itself to consider. The air is too thin to breathe, which makes air important, precious, sacred. Not surprisingly, the Reisende unwind by getting “fumed”, their drugs inhaled in the form of powders thrown onto the ONi crystallites. Even their diet is controlled by their environment. Meats don’t exist. It’s hard enough supporting plant life in such a hostile place. Why waste resources they don’t have on livestock? These are just a few examples of many.
Connection to Nytho?
Neuen is a part of my Alfom Shared Universe, which currently includes my novels Nytho and Neuen as well as the short stories “The Badge”, “The Seed”, and “Rogue”. They are all related, although that might not seem to be the case. I can’t tell you how Neuen is related to Nytho without spoiling things. All I can do is encourage you to read them both to see the links starting to form. As I release more novels, the connections will grow and form a complex web. I can’t wait for the broader picture to resolve!
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